Conrad Pankoff

Software Developer

What can I do?

I’m pretty good at writing code and designing systems. I work primarily with
Go and JavaScript, but will happily pick up other languages as I go. I’m also
very comfortable handling deployment and operational duties. Either of these
can range from the very strange (AVR assembly, custom linux builds), to the
very normal (CRUD web apps, Amazon Web Services).

I’m most comfortable working remotely, but I’m always happy to talk about
working onsite in Melbourne, or travelling when necessary.

What do people say about me?

Alan Downie (CEO at Macropod Software Pty Ltd; Bugherd)

Conrad is an exceptional talent that would be of major benefit to any
organisation. I have worked with only a few people with such an incredible
ability to develop large complex systems in a sensible, methodical and
reliable manner. Conrad, is not only an excellent developer, but an extremely
patient and attentive team member, always willing to lend a hand to help
colleagues. I would gladly recommend him for any role which requires
diligence, consideration and precision. He has been a pleasure to work with,
and I can only hope that I have the privilege to do so again in the future.

Bernard Duchesne (CTO at Nimblic Pty Ltd)

I had the good luck of meeting Conrad at a technical meetup in 2014. My
company was in the early phase of developing of our core server technology; a
complex task management system for hospitals. Conrad was initially invited to
provide code review but he soon took the leadership of building our entire
server and its infrastructure. He did work that would have normally taken an
entire team and produced code of outstanding quality and on time. This is a
rare combination of skills that I have seen very rarely in my 30 years in the
software industry. I highly recommend Conrad.

What can I show you?

If you want to take a quick peek, my “greatest hits” are probably:

cfx - a small toolkit implementing several
“missing” cloudformation CLI features

What have I done?

2017

Starting in mid 2017, I’ve been working with Fagersta Steels
(https://fagersta.com.au), helping to port their internal sales and
business process tools from Microsoft Access to a web-based system.
Some highlights have been learning about the ZPL printing system, and
optimising Microsoft SQL Server queries.

In mid to late 2017, I worked with Moving Data (https://movingdata.com/) to
build several proof of concept onboarding and ordering services for Telstra.
These involved reverse engineering internal APIs and building the
software, for which I used JavaScript and Go.

In early 2017, I worked with a US-based company providing consumer packaged
goods pricing insights to supermarket and retail chains. My duties included
building several scaleable web scrapers, a scheduling and reporting
system to automate them, and the ETL (extract/transform/load) pipeline to
get all the data into one format. Most of this has been implemented in Go.

Also in early 2017, I worked with an Australian company on a novel identity
system with a basis in strong cryptography. Despite being retained for
my understanding of the underlying cryptographic material, I’ve also been able
to draw on my experience with identity systems inside telecommunication
companies to help streamline some of the actual product features. I’ve also
built several backend services in Go, and wrote a prototype mobile
application for Android and iOS using React Native.

In early 2017 I worked with Telstra, automating a desktop application so
it could be used in an API workflow. This involved simulating a real user at a
desktop, as the internal system was Windows-only and used a custom drawing
engine, rendering it nearly impossible to inspect. I used computer vision
and low-level Windows event hooking to complete the project. This was
implemented in Go and C++.

2016

In 2016, I worked with a US-based company building a grocery price
comparison prototype. I built the customer facing application using React
and Redux for the frontend, and Go for the backend. I implemented an
innovative human-aided product matching system to drive the backend
database. I also took care of the deployment and operations.

Also in 2016, I worked with an Australian government organisation on a project
to help educate the public on keeping their personal information safe online.
This involved mobile application development for iOS and Android using
React and Redux with PhoneGap, backend development using Go,
deployment/operations, and product research.

2015

From 2015 to early 2017, I worked with Easil (https://about.easil.com/) on an
online vector graphics editor. This involved a lot of React, Redux, tooling,
and periphery tasks. My main focus was on React testing and React
performance. I also handled operational tasks, migrating several services
from DigitalOcean to Amazon Web Services, specifically to take advantage
of more comprehensive automation.

2014

From 2014 to 2016, I worked with Nimblic on a communication product for the
medical industry called Medtasker (http://www.medtasker.com/). I wrote
nearly all of the backend code (using Go) and took care of most of the
operational duties at that time. I became familiar with several medical
standards, including HL7 and FHIR.

In 2014, I helped a Sydney-based company by significantly improving their
node.js application performance. Their product was buckling under load,
causing them to miss out on hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of
business at peak times. This involved refactoring on both the node.js backend
and the backbone-based frontend. In two days, the system was stable enough to
survive peak periods. In a month, there was no noticable slowdown at all.

From 2014 through to the end of 2015, I was working at Bugherd
(https://bugherd.com/), where I contributed to three products: Brief, Stack,
and Bugherd. For Brief, I wrote the backend in Go, and built a
(JavaScript) GraphQL/Redux based data layer for the client part of Stack,
among other client-side architectural improvements.

earlier

From 2011 through to 2014, I worked at Moving Data. There, I built systems
dealing with machine-to-machine (IoT) data collection and analysis. This
involved writing code, reverse engineering, product development,
deployment and operations, and support. Here, I used node.js, C (with
libuv), and Go.

From 2009 through to 2011, I was self-employed. I built a specialised
system for storing and retrieving personal contact details, which I supported
while travelling in Japan. This system was built in PHP, which I’m no longer
up to date with.

What now?

Well, this is the end of my story. If you’d like me to be involved in your
story, why not send me an
email or give me
a call? I’m always happy to talk about new opportunities,
and if you’ve got a problem that needs solving, I might just be the person for
you.